My First Gourmet

Ahhhhh. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t in lovely? Doesn’t it make you want to sigh with pleasure?

I was so excited when I saw my first issue of Gourmet waiting for me when we came back to Edmonton that I literally clutched it to my chest and jumped for joy.

I ordered Gourmet back in October and I knew it would take a while to get here. It’s also the first food mag I’ve ever subscribed to, so forgive me if I’m a wee bit excited.

The issue is all about Italian cooking. I’ve never been particularly interested in Italian cooking, evidenced by the fact that our Jamie’s Italy cookbook has been sitting on our shelf for two years and we have never made a single recipe from it (I know! It’s a bit ridiculous). But there are definitely some recipes in this magazine that I would like to try. Starting with the cover, I must admit. I’m not much of a meat person, but that spaghetti and meatballs just looks so simple and luxurious all at once, so flavourful and comforting. All the things Italian cooking should be.

I’d also love to try the shaved-fennel salad with oranges and pecorino, the pizza bianca, and the sweet ricotta pastries.

There’s a great article in here about Italian restaurants in New Orleans, which made me a bit nostalgic. I went on exchange to that city in my third year of university, when I was just starting to realize how much I loved food and everything to do with it. I didn’t have much money and I only made it to one of the places mentioned in this story, Brocato’s Italian bakery. A wonderful family I met through my cousin took me there for spumoni and little seed cookies.

Reading this mostly makes me want to A) eat a lot of pasta, and B) go to Italy. Which are not bad things. But for now the meatballs recipe is going on my mental challenging-things-to-make list. I’m sure the recipe itself it actually pretty easy, but I’m not used to cooking with meat and this involves large, ground quantities of it. Which means it will also be a bit pricier than our standard vegetarian fare around here.

You can be almost guaranteed that whenever I do make it, you will read about it here.